


Hold the Long Dark

by LauraDoloresIssum



Category: Hold The Dark (Film), The Long Dark (Video Game)
Genre: Auroras, Canada, Chapters/Episodic, Crossover, Gen, Heavy-Handed Animal Motifing, Not Canon Compliant, Supernatural Elements, Wilderness Survival, Winter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28125627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LauraDoloresIssum/pseuds/LauraDoloresIssum
Summary: Plot spoilers for both media!A crossover between two spiritually-similar and excellent works. A teenage resident of Great Bear who may no longer be entirely human balances practicality with her misanthropic upbringing, after the events of the First Flare and the subsequent catastrophic destruction send survivors to her safehouse. Each survivor is a character from each current chapter (1-3 as of this writing) of WINTERMUTE.
Kudos: 4





	1. Grey Mother and Timberwolf Lodge

Cold. She was so cold. She pressed herself into a chink in the mountain face, trying not to breathe. With every breath, every step, more warmth left her body. Just had to sit for a bit, consolidate her heat. Her stomach hurt so badly it was hard to stand. She curled into the smallest ball she could, trying to shelter her body from the wind with her backpack. Below her, the curving road took a lethal drop, allowing for a breathtaking view of the middle of Great Bear, snow-capped trees and frozen lakes. It was three in the afternoon, and the last fragments of sunlight were fading from the sky. The Long Dark was rapidly approaching, an endless purgatory of gloomy boredom as familiar to her as the back of her own hand. And when night fell it would be much, much colder.

She wasn’t getting any warmer. The wind was sinking into her body. She hauled herself up and forced herself to take another step, then another. The logic of survival was uncompromising. The longer she kept moving, the longer she would survive, at least until she passed out from exhaustion. Just a little farther. There would be shelter soon. Even just someplace out of this wind.

She kept to the rock face, following the slow bend of the path, staying low to minimize the chances of a wayward gust sending her off the side. In a tiny indent in the cliff, a dark fissure near the ground, only visible because of the snow that caked around the mouth. Too low for a bear to get in, but wolves might live there. Big enough for her, just barely. She approached it warily. Steam. A hot springs. There were a couple of them scattered around the mountains.

With the last of her energy, she crawled inside and collapsed against the wall. The combination of heat and water hit like a brick to the face.

“Oh. Oh.” She held out her rabbit-gloved hands like she was trying to ward off a club, feeling the air scour her skin like fire, even underneath all her heavy clothes. Her eyes watered in pain, but she couldn’t have moved if she wanted to. She growled loudly into the darkness with the last of her anger. Nothing answered her.

She lay in a daze for an uncertain amount of time. She had begun to heat up, and she was leaning awkwardly on her backpack. By the time she finally roused herself to full consciousness, her left arm was numb and she was covered in sweat. Her mouth was dry and her throat felt parched. She began to undress.

She unwound her long wool scarf, which in turn allowed the fur-lined hood of her coat to fall, and took off her rabbitskin hat. Next, she untied the long strips that kept her sleeves and pants in place. She removed her gloves, then both fur coats, then her snowpants, then her mukluks. Then the two thermal layers of synthetics and wool, now soaked in sweat and useless until they dried.

She rolled her clothes into a clumsy ball and tied them by her bedroll. She had no more firewood, but it was so incredibly hot as she went further into the cave that a fire wouldn’t have done much. Her filthy, untrimmed hair hung heavily on her shoulders as she passed her hands back and forth in front of her. The ceiling was higher than she could reach, and just wide enough that she could almost touch each side with her arms straight out. Occasionally water dripped onto her head. Her toe stubbed against something metal.

She stepped back in surprise. Her hand found a pipe, some kind of deactivated machine. It vaguely seemed like machines had been working less and less lately. She felt around gingerly. A thermal-powered genny, maybe? Did those exist? A water heater? She had no idea. It had a lot of pipes and bundles of wires.

She felt around as high as she could reach, trying to trace the pipes back. Instead, her fingers brushed the back wall, and a ladder. At the top of the ladder was a hatch. She crawled through it, and felt herself enter into a wide, warm, cavernous space. She lit a match.

It was a basement, lined with big metal cabinets and shelves. A workbench with a mounted vise and a can crusher stood in one corner, next to a home bar with a locked liquor cabinet. A washer and dryer by the back wall. A woodbin by the stairs. Some filing cabinets.

She cautiously set her bag on the floor and drew a knife from the loops. There were supplies just sitting on the shelves, canned goods, flares, water. She put the match carefully between her teeth, ready to spit it out. A stranger, particularly in nothing but a pair of men’s boxers and a mask, would not be welcome. She tried a few cabinets. They were locked.

She ascended the stairs barefoot and poked her head out onto the ground floor. It was the main area of a hunting lodge, complete with big fireplace and ugly animal heads. The room itself was already bigger than most of the buildings she’d seen in her life. The smell of stale tobacco filled her nose. She spit out the match and stepped on it with her bare heel. The place had the quiet of something not just empty but abandoned.

She let the mask fall around her neck, which felt far more like undressing than nudity had. It was realistic down to individual strands of chiseled fur, lined with fur, with narrow eyes to cut the glare from the snow. It had once belonged to her adoptive parents, the Slones. They were white and had originally been from a fishing town on the southern edge of Great Bear, she knew that much and nothing more, except that the spirit that possessed her sometimes had been passed down from them like a disease.

She raided the cabinets over by the stove and was pleased to find a cache of tins. The rich city bastards who must have owned this place had left it fully stocked. They could die out there in the snow for all she cared. She was so hungry. She pulled out a rusty tin of condensed milk and a can opener, opened it, sniffed it, and decided it was okay to eat, but it might not be tomorrow. She tipped it into her mouth and licked out the insides. Her stomach immediately screamed in protest. Too heavy. Too thick. Too much after three days without food. She staggered upstairs, found the nearest bed, and passed out on it.

She awoke chilled and weak from hunger, but much better than the day before. She found a plaid shirt and a pair of men’s pants and hiking boots in the closet, got dressed, and headed downstairs to take inventory.

Some rich city bastard had been planning something, that much was clear. The place was stocked like a bunker that someone had only halfway finished preparing. Food, water, firewood, batteries, everything. She frowned and shook her head a little, like she was trying to shoo a fly.

Unsettling. She had been a bit busy freezing and starving, as happened occasionally when you were on your own and weren’t stupid enough to trust Others, but… there had been that feeling in the air. Like electricity in the air before a big summer storm. Vernon Slone had taught her a little about electricity. It had been particularly strong the day before yesterday, the day she had first entered the mountains. She had lost that night, but when she had woken up in the morning, things had felt settled, like some charged potential had finally snapped. Now that she had her wits about her, she could feel that it wasn’t entirely gone. Unsettling. Not violent, not a _bang_ feeling, more of a prickle. Had the rich city bastard felt it too?

One of the cabinets in the basement was green and looked suspiciously like a gun safe. It had an electronic combination lock. She pushed a few buttons, but nothing responded. She sighed.

Outside was a tiny clearing where the ground leveled a little. It was warmer today, so she went outside to examine the outside of the house. It was stone and looked new. All the ground floor windows and doors were grated with security cages, which made her nervous about the potential for nearby bears once it got warmer. The windows were some kind of fancy modern thing, which meant nothing to her except that they felt very warm. Rabbits thickly clustered the backyard, so she left a wire dog cage out, packed with shredded paper and cardboard, with some vegetable bait.

It was the 3rd of September, which on Great Bear meant winter was just starting. It would stay until at least early April, so she had to count on about two hundred days of cold. So long as she was careful, she would be able to scan around for food, perhaps even find a handgun or a rifle that someone had left in an uncareful place, and avoid any Others. That was old hat for her. The Slones had raised her in the wild, occasionally venturing into towns to steal. She didn’t remember life before them, how she might have fallen in with them. The Slones hadn’t talked about those sorts of things. They hadn’t talked much at all.

She went out for a quick jaunt, to scout the area. She didn’t see anything that might shelter a bear, which gave her some hope. Wolves had taken down a deer nearby, but her approach scared them off and she took about a third of the meat with a knife. Sharing was key. So long as nobody went hungry, everyone could go peacefully on their way.

Approaching the rabbit trap, she heard scuffling inside, and lunged to quickly close the door. There seemed to be three of them in there. She successfully carried them upstairs to the second floor. They scurried around and screamed, but none of them died of fright, which was always a risk with rabbits. After a while, they settled down. Soon she’d have to get to building a real hutch for them.

She was sitting in the dark, idly making tinderplugs by route while waiting for some water to boil, when she heard a voice that was definitely not a crow. Her head snapped in the direction, but the sound did not repeat. She glanced nervously at the pot, the bottom of which was lined with tiny white bubbles like a cluster of frail pearls. That had been human, she was sure of it.

She abandoned the half-shredded newspaper and ran upstairs, her body tightened into a loping bound. She grabbed a pair of binoculars and rolled up a tiny bit of curtain. In the starlight, a lone figure, only visible because it was moving against snow, walking slowly parallel to the house.

Her nostrils tightened, and she growled. The Slones had taught her to avoid Others. Others carried guns and would take advantage of you every chance they got, especially the Mainlanders. They had taught her about all kinds of Others, Mainlanders and Rich City Bastards and Idiots From Little Ramshackle Towns and Cops. But the stranger might have valuables, food, water, a working radio. And it was best not to take chances that they might try to come back when they got hungry, or wounded. She had seen such things happen to other people.

The figure was moving past the house now, not seeming to care that it was there. She approached gingerly, holding the knife, moving as quietly as she could in the snow. The figure must have heard her anyway, because they turned around. A long shape extended from their shoulders. There was the click of a rifle.

“Get away!” the figure called, in the harsh, raspy voice of an old woman. The outline of a black cloth was clear on her pale face. She was blind. “Back down!”

She opened her mouth and tried to say, “Easy.” It came out in a disused groan. She coughed. “Easy,” she said again, and it sounded more like words. “Do you need help?”

“Who are you?” The voice behind the gun didn’t sound at all like she needed help.

She had a name that she was supposed to give to Others. “Theodosia Slone. Was that you I heard yelling?”

“Slipped. Alright now. You live around here?”

“If I say yes,” she said cautiously, “will you shoot me?”

“Depends. You planning on killing me and taking everything I own?”

“Depends. Are you gonna do the same to me?”

There was a tense moment. Then the blind woman lowered the rifle. “I am called Grey Mother. I’m from down in Milton.”

Theodosia knew Milton, from a distance at least. Little ramshackle mining town east of here that had been getting increasingly ramshackle as the decades had gone on. The Collapse had been the fatal blow to idiots from little ramshackle towns, but it was a slow and lingering death that hadn’t changed much about the day-to-day. She saw how the old woman was shaking in the terrible cold. Her toes were already starting to ache. She did not ask what had brought an old blind woman with a pearl necklace and climbing gear all the way to the Valley. She didn’t care.

“I have a fire going.”

The water was boiling now. From the way Grey Mother dropped into a chair by the stove, she was weaker than she appeared. She was covered in snow like she’d taken a tumble down a hillside. Theodosia got some soup and meat going, and grabbed a box of crackers.

When she placed the bowl by Grey Mother, the old woman smelled it and rattled the cracker package and instantly said, “Tomato soup and saltines? I didn’t think I’d wandered by a retirement home.”

“You don’t like it, you can eat the bowl,” said Theodosia, dropping a fresh sliver of venison into the meat pot and hearing a satisfying sizzle.

But Grey Mother’s mouth was already full. “Girl, I’m so hungry I’m ready to eat rocks.”

They ate the rest in silence, the sort of silence that created bonds between Islanders.

“Only Slones I ever heard of,” Grey Mother finally said, scraping up the last of the soup with some venison, “were down south, years and years ago now. Word is they killed their little boy, then a bunch of cops, then vanished into the snow and nobody ever heard of them again.”

Theodosia said nothing.

“Folks said that they had become hollow, the way people do when they’ve given up on life, and spirits had smelled the empty bodies and come out of the darkness to possess them. Could even be true. No crazier than an electric tingle in the air that's made all the predators go crazy, anyway. It's the same with you. When I leveled that gun on you, I thought you were a man-eater until I heard you talk. That feeling isn’t gone. You don’t feel much like a person, unless you’re sick or crazy from something. You’ve got an animal charge.”

“I’m hunted too,” muttered Theodosia, rinsing out the empty soup can.

“Is that right?” Grey Mother meditated on this. “Seen a woman go by here? Dark hair, scarf with birds on it? Or a man with a jackrabbit on the back of his coat?”

“Not seen a soul since winter fell ‘till you. Where you headed?”

“Needed to get out of Milton. Nothing left there now. I was just planning to get to the center of the island, away from all the people dying on their way to the sea. Head to the coast and wait for help if it happens again, they told everyone after the quakes.” She shook her blindfolded head. “There’s no help coming. Can you feel how everything’s gone quiet?”

Theodosia said slowly, “‘A farmer lived by a railroad, and slept through the racket when every night at one am the train came right by his house. One night, the train was late. At one am exactly he was abruptly woken by nothing at all.’ Every day is like that now, like being startled awake by silence.”

Grey Mother nodded. “Not many people left.”

Theodosia set down the can. “Not many warm places, either.”

She lifted the top of the cage, and there was the sound of animals burrowing deeper into their shreds. “And this is where I’m keeping the rabbits. I’m hoping they breed.”

“Glad to see you think ahead.” Grey Mother leaned on the doorframe. “Think your store will take us both?”

“Easily. I can bring back deer and rabbit. We’ll have to lean on the tins for vegetables until spring. Do you know how to grow things? Hoping to start a garden, although I’m not sure how.”

“Sure can. And you need me to teach you how to get a fire going once our matches run out?”

“Flint and I already get along well.”

“Then we’ll do fine, girl. We just gotta be ready for whoever comes by next.”

Theodosia covered the rabbit hutch with a cloth, and she felt them relax under the darkness. “Tell me about the Others.”

“Here and there, like fallen cinders, struggling to keep warm. Be glad we're not them; everything their lives relied on just went bust. But far as I see it, they’ve had that coming for a long time.”

They started keeping a daily log, dating back to when the electricity went out, and every day at least one of them journaled a little, all in Theodosia’s clumsy hand. She scoffed at the exercise, but Grey Mother was adamant.

“It’ll keep us grounded, girl. Otherwise the days just blend into meaninglessness and time suspends itself. We’ll spend a hundred years here before the grass comes up.”

“I survived eighteen years without your help,” she grumbled, but without vigor.

Now that there was someone to look after the home front, she began venturing out. The good weather continued into the week, and through the next. It would undoubtedly be the last for a very long time. The nicotine-tainted vinyl furniture was hauled outside and burned. Theodosia raided all the nearby homes and buildings, which had allowed her to replace the furniture, as well as tin sheeting to mouseproof the dry goods cabinets. She found caches made out of old unstable bunkers, and boxes buried in farm fields, and houses with wall safes. It seemed that everyone had sensed the coming disaster, deep in their hindbrains.

After a week and a half, the lodge was much improved. Strings of colorful electric lights draped the walls and hung from the antler chandelier. The taxidermies had been replaced by pictures of animals, birds, and fantastical landscapes. The trash around the floor and the collection of junk in the basement had been taken apart for scrap metal, electronics, and wood. Grey Mother’s rifle went above the fireplace and stayed there. On Day 23, the temperature plummeted again, and there it would remain. Winter had settled in.

When Theodosia woke up on Day 24, she was underneath the bed with an aching jaw and scabbed-up bite marks on her arms and legs. The chamberpot was open and rank. She had lost time to the spirit again. When she tried the door, it was locked. She rattled it loudly.

“Hello? Hello?”

There were footsteps outside the door. “Is this a trick?”

“No. What happened?”

“You attacked me, girl. I came in to see why you were making strange sounds and found you rattling the window, trying to climb out. You were crazed and didn’t recognize me. You’ve been in there since yesterday morning.”

“Are you alright?”

“I’ll live.” The door opened, and she was standing there with the gun, her red feather-patterned shawl around her shoulders. “Tell me about it.”

Theodosia opened her mouth, then closed it. “It just comes out of the night and I lose myself. The Slones were part of the darkness all the time. Spent half my childhood like them.”

“Are you safe?”

“I’ve never hurt anyone before.” She hesitated.

Grey Mother answered the unasked question. “I feel when the electricity flares too. The anger in it.”

When Theodosia came home on Day 27 hauling heavy chains and thick padlocks, Grey Mother helped her install them in the basement without a word.

The next day, one of Pleasant Valley’s week-long blizzards began to brew. The thermometer by the upstairs porch was dipping below -53℃, and soon it would drop farther. In the cabin office upstairs, Theodosia dumped fresh reeds and grass into the big cage, whereupon the three rabbits cautiously emerged from their warren of cardboard and shredded paper. The lightbulbs had begun to redden, glinting off the snowblown window. She shuddered.

There was just enough time to change out the rabbits’ bedding and hurry to the basement. The lights were coming fully to life, and the battery charger she kept plugged into the living room wall was blinking. There was no way to turn them off — the lightbulbs could have been entirely removed from the sockets and they would have kept burning — but she welcomed the comforting glow. It made it much easier to lock herself in the basement and wind the chains around her body. Then the aurora flared, and she became lost.

She awoke on the cold concrete floor, sore from wrenching against the chains. It was over now, and the rest of the night’s brightness was free. The workbench and the full shelves glinted cheerfully at her.

The gun safe was blinking. She crawled over, rubbing her arms, and hesitantly turned the lock. It swung open. Empty. She growled.

Upstairs, the laptop was fully charged. She tried her hand again at some of the programs on the computer, wrote the day’s entry in the journal, read a little, and fell asleep.

It was Day 31. The bitter air had the bite of another snowstorm in the works. The peaks of the lodge were just in view, which meant there was only a few more minutes of hauling before she could warm the aches out of her body. The wind gusted again, threatening to knock her down. Snow pelted into the slit she had left in the long scarf wrapped around her head. No footprints remained in the ever-rising snow. She panted heavily into the wool wrapping.

In the shed around back, she pulled slabs of dense meat wrapped in butcher paper out of her pack. The mooseskin felt like it weighed forty-five kilos. She pulled thick rubber gloves over her rabbit mitts and opened the chest freezer. She stuffed almost a dozen rough slabs of moose meat into the bottom, packing fresh ice between each piece from a can. From the top, she pulled two chunks of venison. The bloody ice was disposed of; the meat went into a battered cooking pot hanging on its reserved hook by the door. She stripped off the rubber gloves as she closed the chest freezer. She did it all without needing to see; she’d carried out this ritual many times since winter had started. The skin fell into a pile on the floor, and she got down on her hands and knees and spread it out. Even after all her work cleaning and preparing it, it still stank faintly of blood.

She clumsily unlocked the back door, stumbled inside, pulled the security grate back into place, and locked the door behind her, letting the curtain fall across the doorway. The unlit lodge seemed like a vast and cavernous belly.

Grey Mother came over and took the pack from her hands. Theodosia heard her walk to the kitchen and begin putting the canned food away. She felt her way down the basement stairs and retrieved wood from the bin. Upstairs, she stacked a fire blind, leaving it unlit (the meat would need to defrost first) and lit the lamp to note down what she had brought back that day in a notebook. Then she went to feed and change the rabbits and put away the rest of the inventory. When dinner was ready, they ate in companionable silence.

The next week was mostly blizzard. They mended or tore apart clothes and slowly turned the massive pile of old papers overflowing from the filing cabinets into tinderplugs, rubber-banded together in groups of twenty. They had officially passed the stage where they needed to hunt for skins, and neither of them missed having to go outdoors for a week or so. Grey Mother was still feeling rather frail from her near-lethal climb up the mountains, and Theodosia wasn’t prone to cabin fever. She had a deep appreciation for houses.


	2. Jeremiah

It was Day 39. The sun was rising at ten in the morning and setting at three-thirty now. She left in the middle of the night with the rifle and went much farther than she usually did, all the way down to the convenience store, across from the abandoned town. It would take the whole day to get back, but it would be worth it. Miraculously, it was almost completely unraided. She slid in through a window, and was almost done stuffing her bag when she heard someone trying to get in the front door.

She paused briefly, her glove around a beautiful jar of gleaming peanut butter that had fallen between the shelves. The voice on the other side of the door was deep and presumably male, cursing as it jiggled the prybar back and forth. Theodosia had just managed to cross to the window when the man clearly gave up and began making his way around to the back. As soon as she heard him start to force the back door, she moved. First the bag went through the window, then her, then she was walking away.

“Hey, wait!”

She spun around and brought up the rifle. A burly white man with a plaited red beard was standing there, his hands in the air. He was dressed in furs, like her, with a bow and arrows. A bearskin coat was bundled firmly around him.

“Hey, there, meat eater,” he said softly. “I ain’t gonna hurt you. I’m injured, I’m just looking for food.”

A wolf howled somewhere nearby. He glanced nervously over. Her eyes didn’t waver, but she half-lowered the rifle.

“Hey, listen. I’m not trying to hurt anyone. I’m just a trapper from down by Mystery Lake, I got here through the old dam. Have you seen a man with a blue jacket? Picture of a rabbit on the back?”

She surveyed him from behind the mask. He was standing with a certain gingerness that suggested recently healed ribs. His eyes weren’t moving anywhere but on her. He seemed to be alone, and from the amount of stuff he was carrying, he didn’t have a camp.

“He a Mainlander like you?”

He blinked. “How do you—?”

“I haven’t seen any Mainlanders. Now get out of here. There’s nothing left in that store except dog food and soda anyway.”

His face fell, and he shuffled his feet but didn’t move. “Do you have a working radio?”

Her eyes narrowed behind the mask. “No.”

“Please, I need to contact some people. I need to know if my friend got through a message.”

“That doesn’t sound like my business.”

He turned his head aside and swore. “Christ on a _crutch_! Goddammit, this is important.”

“My radio doesn’t work, Mainlander. I haven’t seen one that has all winter.”

“Not even when the lights are in the sky?”

Theodosia aimed the gun. “You know something about that?”

“I’ll tell you if you give me some food.”

She considered, then gestured carefully with the gun. “Alright. Inside.”

He sat on the counter, which creaked slightly under his big frame, and put his hands carefully away from his pockets. The gun across her lap, Theodosia tossed him a water bottle and a jerky bar, which he instantly tore open. The store was poorly insulated, and their breath smoked in the air.

“You’re a decent person,” he said as he swallowed down the last of it. Watching him was making her hungrier. “Most people would have just demanded info and then shot me.” He took a moment to guzzle some water. His lips were split from cold. “Goddamn, that’s good.”

“Tell me about the lights.”

He sighed. “I have this radio,” and he slowly reached down for his satchel, looking up questioningly. She nodded. He pushed some stuff aside and pulled out an odd, very large rectangular radio. It looked unlike any she’d ever seen.

“This thing’s supposed to be able to pick up signals from well into the mainland. But I haven’t gotten a peep from it for a month. I should be hearing chatter from small-time airports or local news stations, or hell, even a ham operator or two. Whatever’s happening to us, it’s not just here. It could be affecting the whole country. Which means it could be months before anyone comes to rescue us.”

Theodosia actually laughed, a dry, hacking sound.

“Wha— okay, what are you doing?” He lowered the radio. “Why are you laughing?”

“Mainlanders! Fuck, Mainlanders!” She took one look at him and burst out laughing again.

“Are you people psychic or something? I’ve lived on Great Bear for five years, how—”

“You actually think _rescue_ is a possibility? No, no. _Nobody_ is out there. We’re on our own, as always. And the fact that you’re still thinking about rescue is hilarious.”

He growled. “For all your complaining about how the rest of the world doesn’t do anything for you, you’re pretty eager to write them off. You don’t want anything to be left out there because you think it’s payback. You want us dead. You just don’t have the guts to do it yourself.”

Theodosia surveyed him. “So I’m a goddamn coward. But then again, so are you.”

He crossed his arms, but the gesture was ruined as he uncrossed them to finish off the water bottle. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“You’re not willing to attack a lone woman half your size. That tells me a lot.”

He scratched a grizzled jaw. “We shouldn’t kill each other. Plenty of other things made of meat out there.”

Through the frost-occluded door, Theodosia glimpsed a deer, bent over nibbling at some grass through the snow. There weren’t many of them out in the open like this.

“Well, alright then. Think you can take that deer down?”

His eyes widened as he caught sight of it, already pulling the bow from his back. The back way shut softly. The first arrow missed, and the deer’s head shot up in alarm. The second one didn’t.

She waited until he was busy over the carcass to open the front door. “That’ll take two of us with all that stuff you’re carrying.”

He glanced up, then back down, then up again. “I suppose it will,” he said, uncertainly.

Grey Mother met them at the door, a machete in one hand, which she handled with a distinctly deadly air. “Who’s that with you?”

The outsider cleared his throat gruffly. “M’name’s Jeremiah, ma’am.”

“Mainlander, is it? Hmph.” She spared a moment to nod in Theodosia’s direction. “He can come in.” And she shut the door.

Jeremiah smiled admiringly under his beard. “I think I just got the Great Bear equivalent of a surprise party.”

She hoisted the roughly-cleaned skin. “This way, around back.”

Jeremiah’s radio went on the table in the main room, and they took turns that evening flicking through channels. All it received was static or silence.

“Goddammit,” Jeremiah muttered again, lightly smacking the table.

“Sure it’s not the towers?” said Grey Mother, repairing the rabbitskin hat in her lap.

“I’m not sure of anything. I just hope Mackenzie got here alright. I saw signs on my way that someone had been through recently, but as soon as I got through the caves I lost him.”

Theodosia shrugged, leaning against a bookcase reading. “Pleasant Valley’s so large and difficult on foot there could be a dozen people scattered around the basin and we’d probably never come across them ‘till spring.”

“Don’t worry about Mackenzie,” said Grey Mother. “People like that don’t go down easily.”

Jeremiah hauled himself up. “I’m going to bed,” he said gruffly, which Theodosia guessed was his way of being worried. “First on the left, right?”

“That’s it.”

As his heavy footsteps rose, Theodosia tiptoed to where he had stashed his bag in the closet under the stairs. “Have you seen his beard?” she whispered.

Grey Mother shifted interestedly.

“It’s all braided up with ties on the ends, like some rich city bastard.” She unzipped it as quietly as she could. “Geological maps with official-looking insignia. M9 with two empty clips. Sewing kit. Empty flask, smells like whiskey. Half-eaten MRE. Full water bottle. Medical supplies. Space blankets. Some tools. Powerful binoculars. Two cans of pork and beans. And the weird radio.”

Grey Mother snorted, and said quietly, “I can see why they told him to be a trapper. Far, far away from other people. Idiot.”

Theodosia closed up the bag. “They told him to go and live on the Island disguised as a bear, but he thought they meant a gay bear, and now we have this.”

They both laughed quietly about this for a minute.

“Do you think we can trust him?”

“Mackenzie is a good man,” Grey Mother said after a moment. “I suppose if I could trust him, I can trust someone who cares about his safety.”

And that was the end of it. Jeremiah never said anything about leaving, and neither of the others brought it up.


	3. Molly and Vince

It was Day 60. Theodosia and Jeremiah were out conducting what he called Stage Two of their raiding process. Stage One was a long-distance sweep, mapping and bringing loose or vital items home. Stage Two was chopping up furniture and bringing back heavier secondary loot like tools and pipes. Ideally, Stage Two would empty out a building of everything usable, and they could draw a red X on it on their slowly-spreading map. Most of what was taken would be brought back to the lodge, but some of it would be left in reinforced safehouses, so that in case of an imminent blizzard or an aggressive animal there was somewhere close with canned food and fuel to hole up in. Whatever else Jeremiah might be, he was good with a hammer.

It was the middle of the day and snowing lightly. They were by the road, bows in hand. Jeremiah was scanning the horizon with his binoculars for deer. Theodosia was sitting in the underbrush, annotating their map.

Jeremiah lowered the binoculars. “There’s someone in the farmhouse.”

“More convicts?” They’d been finding frozen bodies around this area. Most had already been torn to bits by wolves, identifiable only by scraps of their jumpsuits. A few, interestingly, had arrows sticking out of their backs. Jeremiah had just shook his head and shrugged when she had glanced at him.

“Could be. Best give them a berth.”

Theodosia rearranged a can of pumpkin filling in her bag. “We have surprise. Let’s kill them now.”

“What? Why?”

She looked up to his shocked face. “If they’re from Blackrock, we’ll have to do it eventually. We look like an open invitiation for food, shelter, and sex to people like that, and when they find out about us they will hunt us down. It’s just preemptive self-defense.”

“Jesus Christ.” He put the binoculars back up.

“You know I’m right.”

“You’re too damn young to talk that way.” He sighed. “I’m seeing three people. One’s definitely an escapee.”

“Is he in orange?”

“No. But I know the look. They’re on the ground floor, in the kitchen.”

“Weapons?”

“Don’t know, I’d have to get closer.” He rose from the bed of dead branches he had made in the snow. “Give me ten minutes.”

Nine minutes later he was back, his face set. “It’s one convict and two women. One looks like she’s unconscious. The other one’s cooking. He keeps his hand near a revolver on the table. There’s a couple of dead wolves out back that he probably shot with the revolver. There’s a front door and a back door, and a basement door that’s chained and padlocked. Front door would be best, if we can get it open. Sneak up behind him. Basement might also be good, but I couldn’t tell you where it comes out.”

“Can you cut the chain?”

He fiddled in his bag and came out with some metal clippers.

“Basement it is.”

“Wish we’d brought the gun.”

Theodosia checked her knife. “Wanna spend half a day walking back for it?”

Jeremiah led the way, pausing every now and then to check that they were still in the kitchen. They huddled around the basement door. Jeremiah grunted for a few seconds, and the chain slithered into the snow. The metal door was coated with ice, and creaked loudly as Theodosia pulled it open. They both winced, but after nobody seemed to notice over the wind, they went down the basement stairs.

Theodosia, the lighter of the two, went up first and listened at the door. There was the smell of venison, and the sound of silverware.

“They’re eating,” she whispered.

“I’m gonna circle to the front and knock. If he comes by, get him.”

She nodded. She put her head back, trying to filter out the creaks as Jeremiah walked away.

“What happened to your face?” said a coarse-voiced woman.

“I fell off a cliff.” He was raspy, like he had suffered a throat injury. His plate clinked.

The woman sounded unimpressed. “Is that so?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I got time. Got all the time in the world when there’s a gun trained on me.”

“Look, lady, you’re the one who tried to shoot me full of arrows like I had done something to you.”

“You’re a piece of shit who was heading to a supermax. I don’t need a reason to want to kill you.”

“I’m not a good person. But I wasn’t heading there for things I’d done on the outside. I’ve got nothing against you. I just want to sleep somewhere that isn’t—”

There was a knock.

The woman sighed exasperatedly. “What is this, a train station?”

She heard the man pick up the revolver. “Who else lives here?”

“Nobody. It’s me, and as of yesterday, the convalescent.”

“Stay here. Don’t fucking do anything. I’ll deal with this, and then I’ll leave, and you will _not_ come after me again.” The knock came again. “If you do, I will kill you. Got it?”

“Fair trade,” said the woman, grudgingly.

Theodosia waited until he had passed the basement door. Then she opened it. He started to turn around, but she already had the knife to his throat.

He was almost as barrel-chested as Jeremiah. His clothes were bloody and he was missing a large chunk of dark hair. He might have been scarred elsewhere, but the thick bundle of padding he was wearing made it impossible to tell anything else about him. There could be two more revolvers and a flare gun under that old overcoat, so she kept the knife tight.

“Who the fuck are you?”

She tapped the endtable. “Set the gun down.”

He groaned, did so, and put up his hands.

“Walk forward. You’re gonna open the door for my friend.”

“Hold it,” said the coarse-voiced woman. Theodosia turned and saw a hatchet-faced country woman with a hunting bow aimed at her. Her friend was pale and slumped on a makeshift bed near the stove. The house was drafty and cold, even with the fire going, and everyone’s breath smoked in the air. “This is my house. You fuckers aren’t taking shit from me.”

“We’re trying to rescue you,” said Theodosia patiently. “Your friend’s sick. Some guy has a gun trained on you.”

“She attacked _me_! I was just walking down the road!”

“Shut your mouth,” said the woman with the bow.

Theodosia addressed the woman. “I’m Theodosia Slone, and that’s my friend Jeremiah outside. We were stalking deer when we saw you through the windows. That’s it.”

She pursed her lips. “Alright. I’ll get your friend. But one mistake…”

Jeremiah hammered more insistently on the door. There was the deep howl of a mountain wolf somewhere nearby. The woman with the bow huffed and walked out of the kitchen.

There was the sound of the door opening. “You with the creepy girl in the wood mask?” Theodosia bristled.

“Yeah. You alright, ma’am?”

“I’m fine. Come in.”

Jeremiah came in, picking up the revolver as he went. “I’m Jeremiah, and this is Theodosia.”

The hatchet-faced woman said, still with the bow half-drawn, “I’m Molly. On the bed over there is Gwen.”

Jeremiah knelt down to examine her. “She seems fine. What’s wrong with her?”

“Plane crash. She was lying in the wreckage for hours before a passing doctor found her, next to somebody else’s severed torso. Her mind’s still recovering. She was with a group for a while, but that didn’t work out.”

Jeremiah tucked the blankets back over her. “What do you mean, it didn’t work out?”

Molly snorted contemptuously. “Their leader was a damn milquetoast idiot. Tried to trek out of town with the survivors and head for the coast. I guess he just didn’t know what else to do. Just got them all killed. Half from the cold, the other half from the wolves. She crawled away and curled up in a ditch. I found her and carried her home. When she’s awake she’s coherent, but mostly she sleeps.”

Jeremiah glanced at the convict. “What about you, handsome?”

“I’m Vince Descubes. Can your friend put the big knife away? All I want to do is leave.”

Slowly, she removed the knife and stepped away from him. Still with his hands up, he slowly sat on a chair.

Molly might have had a hatchet face, but he looked like someone had gone after him with a literal hatchet. He was covered in gashes, and his nose had not healed well from a recent break. Swelling was receding around both eyes. His neck was covered in ropy slashes that were going to make magnificent scars one day.

He stared at Theodosia’s mask. “Is everyone left after the end of the world crazy? Why are you running around with a serial killer?”

Jeremiah growled in the back of his throat. Although there was only about an inch of difference, he seemed to loom over the other man. “You have more important things to worry about.”

Vince put both hands on the table. “Look, I know what it looks like, I can’t even blame you, but I didn’t start any of this. Just let me walk.”

“You’re not leaving my sight.”

Vince sighed, wheezing slightly.

Molly set down the bow. Her face didn't move from Theodosia and Vince, but her eyes addressed Jeremiah. “You got a camp?”

“Sure. Room for your friend too, if you want.”

She gave him a cold, hard, evaluative Islander stare. “I’m not in the habit of jumping into strangers’ arms. You’ve survived this long, that tells me you’re dangerous.”

Jeremiah smiled grimly. “Keep your enemies close, right?”

She sized him up a little longer, and her gaze lingered on Gwen as she turned away. “I’ll give it a look.”

“We’re not leaving ‘till the morning, though. May we sit down?”

“Please do,” Molly said with unconscious dutifulness, which sounded very unnatural coming out of her mouth. Before they could even move, she had already started filling two more bowls. They both thanked her, awkwardly.

The food was excellent, if much richer than they were used to.

“So, _Vince_ ,” said Jeremiah from across the table.

“Yeah, jarhead?”

“What happened to your face?”

“I fell off a cliff,” he said again, woodenly.

“How did that happen?”

Vince coughed and pulled his bowl back toward him. “Like I told the crazy bitch, it’s a long story. Can I just eat?”

Theodosia warmed her hands on the single candle. She already felt full. “We got nothing else to do tonight.”

He eyed her with distaste. “Mind taking that thing off? I got something of a wolf _phobia_ these days.”

“Mind a lot.”

“Just tell us your long, rambling story,” said Molly, pouring herself some tea. “Before a crazy bitch gets bored and shoots you.”

“Fine.” He took a moment to work his throat. “Our bus lost power and crashed. Someone at the front of the chain gang got the keys off the guard. I just ran. Lived in a trailer outside of town for a while. Crazy wolves everywhere, and it just kept getting colder. Everyone was dead. And the lights kept making me think… strange shit. Having these weird psychotic breaks or something.”

“You’re not the only one,” Molly said dryly.

“So I just picked up what I could find and started walking. Froze my ass off. Got my throat bitten by a wolf. Found railroad tracks at some point, figured they’d take me somewhere, and ended up a lodge due north of this old train maintenance yard. No wiring, and that helped. I stopped having the episodes. But it was full of wolves, and a rabid bear down near the lake.”

Jeremiah cleared his throat. “A bear? How big?”

“I don’t know, a bear-sized bear, living in a cave at the bottom of the cliff underneath the house. I think the electricity was keeping it from sleeping, cause it was constantly pissed. The only way I survived was because the lodge was behind a chain-link fence at one end of a bridge that kept most of the animals on the other side. I got myself pretty well set up, but fuck was it lonely up there. You could see for miles, how there was _nobody_. For months I didn’t see or hear a damn soul. But there started being these voices on the radio. Talking about a helicopter rescue.”

Molly gave a bitter, barking laugh and took a sip of tea.

“I know. I know. The radio didn’t even work. But it made total sense at the time. I mean, they _talked_ to me. Asked for my name, told me theirs, had me describe the lodge, told me when they’d get there, how many other people they’d picked up. We had multiple conversations. First just during auroras, then by the end even during the day.” His voice was getting hoarser.

“And did they?” asked Jeremiah. “Pick you up?”

His fork clinked as he shifted it around, not really eating. “Yeah. Maybe, fifty days in? I heard it. I _saw_ it. It was yellow and it had an eagle on the side. I grabbed the pilot’s hand. He was warm. Next thing I knew, I was falling.”

“Falling,” Gwen echoed sleepily from the bed. Jeremiah knelt next to her.

“It’s okay, honey,” he said, rearranging her pillows. “Eat some of this.”

Vince dry-hacked a few times and continued. “Off a fucking cliff. My clothes were torn open. Some of my scalp got ripped off. It’s a goddamn miracle I survived. I sorta bounced to the bottom, rolled, and smashed my face into a rock. Blood everywhere. Good thing I wasn’t a looker before all this.”

Molly searched her pockets aimlessly in the manner of a smoker who has run out of cigarettes. She was wearing a silver necklace in the shape of moose antlers. “Yeah, I figured not.”

“So much shit was broken. The only thing that made me limp my sorry ass back up to the lodge was I didn’t want to get eaten alive by the bear. And it seemed like a… an act of Providence, you know? Surviving something like that. Like the universe was saying something to me. Set my bones and rested until I could walk. Picked up again, and yesterday I ended up here.”

“Everyone really is crazy here,” said Theodosia, drinking some tea herself.

“Whaddya mean?”

“Providence. No such thing.”

“I can believe what I want,” said Vince stubbornly.

“Children. No religion at the dinner table, please.”

Vince shot her a look. “Then, like I said, I’m just walking down the highway, trying to keep feeling in my toes, looking out for wolves, when I come this close to getting an arrow through my neck.”

Molly chuckled grimly. “Weren’t looking out as well as you thought, then, were you?”

“You kill a lot of people who are just minding their own business? Is Grizzly Adams here the _sane_ one?”

Jeremiah swallowed some soup and coughed. “Guess so. A friend told me what happened to Milton.”

Molly’s eyes narrowed. “What happened to Milton?”

Vince put up a scarred palm. “I tried to stop them, believe it or not. Hobbs and Mathis would have beaten me to death if I hadn’t outrun them. I definitely would have killed one of them before they killed me, sure, but what good would that have done?”

“You should have tried. Might have saved me the trouble.” Molly scraped up the last of her soup. “That’s my husband.”

“What, Mathis? _You’re_ the wife he’s always going on about?”

“That’s me. Broke three of his ribs once. He hasn’t been by here, though. Doesn’t know where I live.”

“Shit. He’s a real son of a bitch.”

Molly’s hardened eyes flicked up. “You almost sound sorry for me.”

“I’ve never met anyone who managed to send him to the hospital. Good work.” The jealousy in his voice spoke volumes.

“What can I say? I’m an angry drunk.”

“I just get hungry when I’m drunk,” said Jeremiah cheerfully, his eyes flicking between their hands.

Molly’s set face cracked, and she chuckled. The tension broke.

That night, they sat up with Gwen. Vince was asleep on the couch in the next room. His deep, wheezy breaths sounded like an injured moose.

“I mixed some whiskey into his bowl. He’s a cheaper drunk than I expected.” Molly sniffed contemptuously and rifled her pockets for cigarettes again.

“We gonna kill him?” Theodosia asked.

“Thinking about it. He and my ex-husband may not be friends, but if they ever meet up and don’t manage to kill each other, he might tell where I am, and then this house won’t be safe anymore. There’s so few people left that they’re almost guaranteed to run into each other at some point. I have to assume it.”

Theodosia shrugged. “We could bring him back with us. Keep your enemies closer.”

Jeremiah looked horrified. “With an injured civilian?”

“We’ll make him carry her.”

Molly played with her necklace. “I suppose we have two options, then. I’d still prefer wrapping things up here.”

Jeremiah lowered his voice even more to a constricted growl. “I’m not so excited about the idea of killing a sleeping guy. Even a Blackrock convict. At least until I know what he was sent there for.”

Molly shrugged. “For a good reason.”

“Well, was he gonna kill you before we got here?”

“He was being very lazy about getting around to it if he was. He shot at me and missed, and then had me lead him back to the house. He wasted a bunch of rounds killing a wolf pack, and then just sorta sat there at the kitchen table and let me go about my afternoon. But I think he was too hungry and cold to think about much else. Warm and fed might be a different story.”

“It’s four on one. He balked at two on one before. We could throw him off another cliff,” Theodosia suggested.

“One man, three women,” Molly corrected her. “To a man, that’s only one enemy. No offense.”

Jeremiah shrugged, a bit uncomfortably. “I don’t think he’s that stupid. One of you nearly shot him and the other nearly stabbed him. He might take Grey Mother at face value, though.”

“I wouldn’t be adverse to bringing him, I suppose,” Molly said reluctantly. “But we need to decide now, before I lose my nerve.”

Jeremiah gingerly tried to put a hand on her shoulder. She stiffened proudly, then slowly put her hand up over his.

“Then let’s do that,” he said. “Better than committing unprovoked murder, anyway.”

Grey Mother was outside, wrapped in furs and chopping firewood, when they arrived, Vince hauling Gwen over his shoulders.

“Good morning, Grey Mother.”

She clucked dismissively. “Why do you keep bringing home strays, girl?”

“They’re injured. They need help.”

“Well, I hope they brought supplies. We won’t make it through the winter at this rate.”

“We’re hard workers,” said Molly, walking over and taking the wood axe from Grey Mother’s hands. “How about I get the rest of this cut?”

“Hmph.” But she allowed the axe to be taken from her. “At least it’s not more Mainlanders.”

“Not all of them, anyway. Get Gwen inside.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vince's story is the true story of a mixed gameplay/roleplay of a survival game where I spent 100 days roleplaying on Voyageur, beginning in Mountain Town.  
> I decided my character was an escapee from the Blackrock bus who had been traumatized by the others burning the schoolhouse, and set myself the task of journalling from his perspective every in-game day. On the nights of auroras, I also roleplayed him as being overcome by rage and restlessness, even patrolling outside with a weapon or going out to RP chopping wood to let off steam, which several times nearly got him murdered by rave-wolves.  
> As he evolved as a character and his journal entries started exhibiting more personality and emotional depth, he started losing SAN. He hallucinated the ghosts of the residents blaming him for not saving them, or of predators lurking around in the corners of the rooms. So he headed to the Trapper's Cabin, found his hallucinations and fits of rage to be much better in buildings without electrics, and eventually spent most of his playthrough in the old hunting lodge in Broken Railroad (in this story he heads right to the Lodge to minimize conflict with the main storyline). He also started journalling about fantasizing a helicopter would come rescue him, even though he admitted he'd be the last person on the island anyone would save.  
> Eventually his fantasy turned into delusion, and as Day 100 (or as he sarcastically called it, his "birthday") got closer, outright hallucinations. He began Day 100 by tidying up the lodge, walking out the backdoor, and into the waiting helicopter... whereupon of course he falls unknowing to his death. Although I was glad he'd found peace I also felt *terrible*, and had become really invested in his character, so in this version he survives.


End file.
